playing house in the ruins of us
by frizzoli
Summary: post 2x15. Maura struggles to come to terms with Jane's betrayal. Jane finds that things aren't quite what they've always seemed to be and makes a few tough decisions of her own. femslash au. complete.
1. we are turning into dust

Hurt.

Hurt is the only thing Jane sees in the minutes that pass after the shooting. Hurt in the slow seep of blood from Dean's chest, the bullet lodged somewhere by his collarbone. Hurt in the slump of Frost's shoulders, knowing a fellow officer of the law- even an FBI agent, as he is- has fallen and it could have been him. Hurt in the two ballistic wounds Patty Doyle bore with such stoicism, one of which she'd caused herself. Hurt, raw and sharp and all too real in Maura's eyes as she keeps Jane away, a few feet away, with the sheer intensity of her pain.

And for the first time since she'd felt the urge to be there for the medical examiner, she can't help. She can't do a single damn thing, because Maura's trust in her is dead, and it's her who's shot it. She stays crouching a few feet away until Korsak and Frankie appear, and Korsak helps her up onto legs that felt like they'll give out any second. It feels like her stomach stayed down on the ground when she stood up- Maura's pressing her hands against Doyle's wounds. Her father's blood is seeping through her fingertips; Jane can see her small shoulders shake with sobs and wants more than anything to be able to hold her.

"What happened?"

She shakes her head as Frankie takes over, Korsak heading back to look at Dean. "Jane, what happened?"

The words won't come out of her mouth when she opens it to speak. She's too busy watching Frost do what she could have done- he takes off his jacket and wads it up, and Maura takes it to put beneath Doyle's head without hesitation. "I shot him," Jane whispers. She feels removed. She feels like she's watching the whole scene from somewhere up on the ceiling- she can feel Frankie's arm around her shoulders but only from miles away. What seems closer to her is Maura turning to bury her face inn Frost's shoulder. What seems closest are the tears Maura should have been crying into _her_ shirt, the fingers that should have been clutching at _her_ arm.

But Maura is crying because of her.

"Kevin tried to get rid of Maura and Doyle was…up on the catwalk." She looks up at it, at where he fell through the rail, and realizes that she's shaking. It feels like Maura's soft sobs are her own- she isn't crying, but they're hurting her. Everything is hurting her. "Doyle shot Kevin, Agent Dean…told him to drop his weapon, then shot Doyle, Doyle shot Dean…" she should be more worried about Dean. Gabriel. No, he's Dean now, Dean only. He'd promised he wouldn't do anything and he's broken his word. "And I…shot Doyle, and he fell."

That's the gist of it. The paramedics come; she doesn't know how long it is before they do. They take Dean first and she watches them take his body onto the stretcher and out of sight without feeling a single thing. It is, she finds guiltily, when they lift Doyle that her stomach twists. But it's when Maura scrambles into the ambulance behind him that Jane feels a strangled half-sob, half-sigh escape her.

"I've got to follow them," she says, starting to feel a little bit more grounded now that she has a mission of sorts to accomplish. Frankie shakes his head immediately. "You shouldn't," Korsak says, giving her the same look he does whenever anyone talks about Hoyt within ten feet of her. "You really should just…go home." His protectiveness just hardens her resolve, and the fact that Frankie agrees with him doesn't help. She nods at Frost and starts walking. "Come on. We'll catch up to them in trauma."

.,.

Hospitals have always freaked Jane out. There's too much behind the walls that she doesn't know and doesn't understand, and it's too easy to think too long about the people behind each door. It's too easy, having seen what she's seen, to imagine it- cuts that go too deep, burns that ruin too much, breaks that destroy entire lives. And the other people, the people who cause that hurt, the people she spends day in and day out trying to catch.

People like her. She's one of those people now, one of the people that have hurt someone who has someone to miss them.

The trauma wing is the worst. So many unconscious people, accidents, doctors rushing and calling for codes and what she imagines the medical equivalent of 'backup' is. For the first time in her life, though, Jane willingly heads right for it, Frost trailing behind her. A tall, balding doctor stops her before she can get through, and she leans up to look over his shoulder, searching in vain for a black trench coat and honey-blonde hair.

"I have to get in. I'm looking for Maura I-"  
>"Doctor Isles," the man interrupts her, eyes practically hidden under the thickest, most obnoxious eyebrows Jane has ever seen with someone with such little hair on his head, "is a liscenced professional, and you don't have permission to enter the trauma wing. You can wait in the waiting room like everyone else."<p>

She squares up, looking him right in the face, but before she has time to say anything, Frost's got her elbow and he's suggesting, in his nice little goody-two-shoes way, that they leave. In te waiting room she pauses, and he looks back over his shoulder to see her. "You coming, or what?"

She looks around. The second she sees someone sitting in a chair, crying, she follows him without any further hesitation. She might have the stomach to shoot someone through the head, but she doesn't have the heart to sit in a room of people who don't know whether or not the person they love is going to live. Not anymore. Not after what she's done.

The elevator is empty except for them. She knows that he's going to speak before he even opens his mouth, and before he's finished his question, she knows how to answer it. "You okay?" She looks over at him and heaves a sigh, trying to bury what little feeling she has left with the numbness that's taking over. "Do I look okay?"

He blinks, then shrugs, sticking his hands deep into his pockets. She knows he's not going to take up a fight with her, as much as she wishes someone would. He's too smart for that. "You don't have to be pissy about it, you know. I'm not asking to be funny."

"I'll be fine. Thanks, but I'll… figure it out."  
>"And Maura?"<br>"Well, we'll see, won't we?"  
>"You were just doing your job. She…she knows that."<br>"I hope so."

.,.

Just because she can't wait inside doesn't mean she's not going to wait outside. Frost is suspicious when she tells him she'll catch a cab, but he leaves her anyway, and she's never been more grateful for it. There's a bench in front of the hospital doors, and even though it's probably somewhere around 30 degrees, Jane hunkers down and waits.

She doesn't have a coat, just a thin blazer. It's not windy, though, and she finds that the cold doesn't bother her as much as long as she's not thinking about why she's there. She counts the cracks in the sidewalk. She checks her phone, fakes a text to Ma, Frankie, Frost, and Korsak, telling them she stopped to eat. She tries to remind herself what she'd thought of when she first took the job as a homicide detective, tried to remember if she'd ever been afraid that she'd make a mistake and hurt the wrong person, but all she can remember is how _unafraid_ she was to get herself hurt.

Before she knows it, it's been an hour and a half. She can't feel her toes, and people are starting to leave. Every time the automatic door whirrs open, she thinks it might be Maura and cranes her neck to see. And every time, she's disappointed. Not that she's entirely sure she wants to see Maura at all, but she knows she should try. A half hour later, at seven, she gives up. She's gotten four texts from Ma asking when she's going to be home, and she knows she can't lie too much longer.

So she leaves. It kills her to do it, and the second she's in the cab her first thought is that Maura's probably just leaving and she's just missed her, but she has to go. She knows she'll be able to find her, somehow, but she also knows she's not going to be sleeping for quite a while. As soon as she gets home, she lets Ma know, then Frost, just because he'd been so worried earlier. It occurs to her to ask him what he knows about either Dean or Doyle's situations, but his answer is 'nothing'- she's not surprised, since he left before her. But Korsak ought to know, and when she gets a text back from him, garbled as most of his texts are ("The buttons are too tiny for my fingers!" "You mean your _paws_, old man?"), saying she should try to call Maura…it's clear to her that everyone else is just as aware of what happened as she is. Maura's never going to look at her the same way again, and she's not sure if she wants to face that just yet.

Besides which, Maura doesn't answer her phone. Not the first, third, or fifth time, and after 5 Jane gives up, because she knows better than to think Maura hasn't seen the messages she left. The phone doesn't ring. It sits in the middle of the counter and she stares at it for about ten more minutes before Jo Friday seems to have enough of it and gets out of her doggy bed just to bark at her. The phone still doesn't ring.

"This is gonna be a long night," Jane sighs, and Jo follows her onto the couch, showing uncharacteristic affection when she nuzzles against the crook of her arm and whines.

The phone doesn't ring.

And eventually, somewhere between three and four o'clock, she sleeps.


	2. running back through the fire

Jane wishes she could say she's surprised when Maura doesn't show up the next morning. She doesn't need anyone to tell her 'Dr Isles has taken a personal day', but everyone does, in their own way, though not always out loud. Korsak's making sympathetic eyes at her over his first coffee and Frost smiles at her like he's in on some little secret. The whole thing makes her sick.

She doesn't want their sympathy. She doesn't need it. Maura needs it. The only thing she wants from them is for things to stay normal, but apparently that's not the plan, and with Maura missing, it only makes things worse. She spends the whole day frustrated and glaring in silence while everyone gives her a ten-foot clearance. When she stops down in the café for a moment, Ma corners her and her frustration boils over. "What? What do you want?"

And there's that familiar look of hurt that, as always, sends Jane into a guilty spiral. "I didn't realize you were going to be so…hostile." 

"I'm sorry, okay? Today's been…stressful."  
>"Well, then you won't like this…"<br>"Do you have to do that? Just tell me. It can't get any worse."  
>"I think it might be better if I stay with you a few nights while this whole thing blows over, babe."<br>"What, you mean for as long as Maura still hates me? Because that's gonna be a while."  
>"Janie, don't be like that. You'll work it out." <p>

She wishes she could say no, but she knows very well that there's nowhere else for her mother to stay. She pushes a hand through her hair and sighs heavily, hardening her own resolve. "Yes. Yeah, you're probably right."

.,.

Jane is surprised by how little her mother has, materially speaking. When she picks her up at Maura's house, she only has two boxes and a suitcase of clothes. And even though it's been a while since the divorce, and the house, and that whole mess, she's struck with a pang of grief so strong she wants to cry. The idea that you could love someone enough to pledge to spend the rest of your life with them, and then they could turn around and leave you with next to nothing…it terrifies her. And it's not fair, especially not now.

She puts a brave face on because she knows better than to let anything but efficiency take over while she's feeling like such a wreck, but when she pulls away she can see Maura watching them through her window, her face perfectly expressionless. By the time she's back at her apartment she knows she's going to go back later to say the things she had wanted to say when she waited outside the hospital. She knows she needs to apologize, and she needs to know, some way or another, what's going on in Maura's mind. She has a hunch that it was Maura who asked her mother to movee out, and she feels less betrayed by that than she thought she would. It makes too much sense to upset her. After a quiet dinner a la Angela, and some brief small talk that she vaguely registers as involving Tommy and his new apartment and his new job as a pizza guy, she gets up and grabs her coat.

"Where are you going?"  
>"To talk to Maura."<br>"Don't you think…maybe you should just leave it for a while?"

As if Angela has any idea how much worse things would be. As if she can even possibly begin to understand what damage it does to their professional relationship if the two of them aren't on speaking terms. "No," she says simply, "I don't."

.,.

Maura's house has never seemed so oddly unfriendly before. It's too quiet, too gray, too…looming. Jane feels like an intruder when she fishes the spare key she was given out of her pocket and turns the lock. The moment she's inside, Maura glances up from where she's cleaning something over the sink and addresses her with the same cold casualty she might a lab tech.

"Jane, please leave."

No hello, nothing. The detective straightens, catching her friend's gaze and trying in vain to keep it there. Maura looks away almost immediately, the same hurt in her eyes as before.

"No, Maura. We have to talk about this."

Maura shakes her head, her usually-perfect hair falling limply in front of her face.

"I'm sorry."

Jane repeats herself, clasping her clammy hands together for a moment. "I'm sorry, Maura. I'm so sorry, I mean it." The truth is that she's never meant anything more. She feels too much, too many different things welling up inside of her- too much she can't name taking over everything she does. The numbness she's forced upon herself for the past day and a half is gone now. She can remember Maura crawling into the ambulance. She can remember how fragile Maura had been in the wake of the destruction she'd caused. She doesn't expect Maura to speak, much less for the tone of her voice to make her want so badly to cry.

"When they looked over the body, Frost looked at Doyle's gun, and it wasn't loaded. He'd used his last two bullets, Jane, defending me and defending himself. If Cavanaugh finds out- if Doyle dies, and Cavanaugh finds out the gun was empty, you can be tried for murder."

It isn't the word murder that makes Jane's blood run cold. It isn't the reality of the situation crashing down onto her that makes her tremble suddenly and violently. It is, quite simply, Maura's voice: detached, flat, empty. Maura has given up. And without Maura, Jane doesn't know that she has any reason to try. She sucks in a deep, shuddering breath, and lets herself fall into the rift between them, tucking her emotions neatly back into place.

"Are you gonna tell him?" As if she's sensed that Jane's resolved not to feel anything else for the time being, Maura looks up, and her eyes have grayed into something that's no longer recognizable as green. No longer recognizable as Maura at all. "I don't want to."

That, at the very least, has a ring of honesty to it. Something surges against Jane's chest and she refuses to let it out, clamping her teeth together because if she doesn't she knows she'll say something she'll regret.

"I don't want to, but I'm not going to lie to him."

She ought to have known. Even if she hadn't shot Doyle- if it had been some other crime lord- and Maura knew, there would have been that complication. Maura's morals, as they have always probably been, are stronger than anything else. Certainly stronger than the friendship Jane has shattered clean to pieces with one shot.

"I screwed up, Maura. I'm sorry. I should have done something else. Anything else."

Even if she meant that- and she isn't sure that she does- she can't think of another way the situation could have ended. She says it mainly because she feels like it needed to be said, not because she thinks it would fix anything, because she knows Maura is smart enough to see through it.

"I asked you to leave."  
>"I'm not going anywhere until we talk." <p>

.,.

Maura can feel her entire body trembling with anger. Not anger, obviously, the physical manifestations of anger: the decrease of seratonin and the sudden influx of adrenaline. Either way, she's shaking slightly, but she's also determined to wipe that look off of Jane's face. She looks hurt, she looks scared, and she looks a thousand other things that she has no right to feel at all. She isn't the one who might lose her father. She isn't the one whose best friend has just betrayed her. She has no reason on Earth to feel as if she deserves some kind of forgiveness or sympathy, and Maura certainly isn't going to give it to her. Not anymore.

"You knew that Doyle wasn't going to shoot you," she's surprised at the steadiness of her own voice, given the constriction of her trachea. "He knew who you were, and he knew you hadn't given him up yet. Even if he'd had bullets left, he wasn't going to hurt you or Detective Frost."

Jane never had a comeback to rationality, but Maura doesn't bother to wait for one. She lifts her chin and feels a twinge of annoyance when Jane looks away.

"And you let Agent Dean get in the way of your job. Doyle's relation to me and his relation to the case should have been confidential. If you had been thinking about protecting me and solving the case, you wouldn't have exposed anything to him." Maura could tell moments after seeing them together that Jane had exposed more than just **information** to him. Their body language had indicated almost painfully obviously that he felt possessive over her, and that she, in her way, was acting the submissive. It shouldn't have bothered her as much as she did. But then, she's always been aware of her feelings for Jane, lurking insensitively in the back of her mind. Not something that helps build a healthy working relationship- in fact, her 'feelings' are what caused her to slip up and let Jane so close, in spite of her better judgment. And now, like everyone else, Jane has disappointed her.

Jane looks up and the hurt in her eyes almost softens Maura's frustration. But no- no. Jane doesn't deserve that, doesn't deserve to feel hurt, she only deserves to feel remorse and the utter wrongness of her actions. _All_ of her actions, from trusting Gabriel Dean down to destroying **their** relationship.

"You let him get in the way of our relationship," Maura continues, nails digging into her palms.

_Please. Make my words important. Make her hear me._

"I trusted you, and you barely knew him, but you told him things about me that I…I thought you'd never tell anyone."

She's said too much, but it's the time and the place for that. There it is- remorse flickers over Jane's face, and the anger in Maura is sated for a moment, until Jane speaks and ruins everything all over again. "I should have been with you."

_You should have been with me. You should have been with me, you should always, always have been with me. From the start to the end. I wanted you with me. And now you've ruined it._

Jane interprets it platonically- 'I should have been with her while her mother was critical in the hospital instead of screwing Dean'- and she agrees. Maura means it much, much differently. She means it in every possible way there is to mean it, and it hurts. It hurts that she trusted someone with her heart and soul and life and it hurts that her trust is broken and now she has nobody. Because in another life, Jane could have been her everything. They were close enough, or at least they had been close enough before everything went to hell. Jane was her best friend- she could have easily pushed past that into soul mate territory, into days and days spent doing nothing but being with each other.

"Please go."

And Maura hates herself for believing it could have happened.

Jane turns to go, and Maura watches her, still shaking. Her voice surprises her and she startles slightly, fairly sure that a few minutes from now she won't be able to stand on her own two feet anymore. "Jane."

.,.

Jane, for her part, is baffled. And hurt, and quite sure she's never felt as horribly about something in her entire life. She knows that if Doyle dies Maura will never, ever forgive her. And she can't help but feel like she's missing something, a piece of the equation. She stops when Maura says her name, even though it's not a question, and she's afraid of what Maura's feeling.

"You were right. You should have been with me."

Maura is inches from her. Jane wonders if it's that easy, if Maura has already forgiven her, if they can move on now and she'll live through the nightmares of this day over and over as long as she can just have her friendship back. She realizes very quickly that this isn't the case.

Quite suddenly, Maura's lips are on hers, and something that should have felt, to her, like an invasion of space, a betrayal, **anything** but long overdue….just feels long overdue. Jane is startled more by how natural it feels and less by the fact that it's happening.

In fact, given her decision-making skills in the past 24 hours, it's very likely that Jane Rizzoli's best decision of the past day or so is to kiss Maura back in the few seconds she can before Maura pulls away. Their breaths mingle and their eyes meet as if they've never properly met before.

"I really think you should go."

And she does.


	3. you broke me

A/n: You guys are FANTASTIC! I love reading all of your comments, and honestly I'm not sure I would have finished this chapter as quickly as I did without your feedback. I'm so glad you're enjoying this so far and I hope you continue to enjoy and review- there's nothing better than feedback, because if you make me feel like someone's actually reading it, I'm more likely to actually WRITE the rest of what I have planned out. Anyway, no fear, next chapter this will earn it's M rating for exactly the reason you're hoping it will. It should be up by Sunday, maybe sooner. Again, thank you for all the lovely reviews!

By the time Jane walked back through her apartment door, she was already a complete and total mess. She'd been expecting that, no matter what the outcome of that conversation had been, but she'd been expecting that Maura would yell at her. She wonders if she would feel any better if that was the case but can't get her mind far enough away from Maura's lips on her own for long enough to come to a decision.

_God, how long have I wanted that? _

About fifteen seconds after she's inside that door, though, she remembers that her mother is sitting on the couch seven feet away, and she hushes herself internally just in case Angela has suddenly developed the superpower to read minds. Or at least to keep herself from blurting out something she really shouldn't. As much as she has to talk about what's happened, she knows better. Besides which she's not really all that sure it even happened, except that her lips are still tingling and she's still shaking slightly.

It had never consciously occurred to her that she might be attracted to her best friend. Born and raised Italian Catholic didn't leave a lot of room for experiments with same-sex relationships, and generally the mention of it at any family gathering made everyone uncomfortable. Not that she knew that any of her immediate family had an issue with it, just that nobody really liked to talk about it. Most of them, or at least two of them, preferred to talk about murders. Which in the long run was a lot more fucked up than talking about homosexuals at the dinner table, _right?_

She doesn't know what to think.

"Janie? What happened?"  
>"Um… nothing. Nothing happened."<br>"Did she forgive you?"

Jane doesn't even have the decency to glare at her hovering mother, in fact, she's too restless and distracted to even realize there's anything to glare about. Instead her tongue catches on her words and she halts halfway through a word, finally coming back into the present as if she's being taken out of the slow-mo version of a DVD.

"Di- did she…? No, no. I mean, she didn't say…she didn't say that she did."

She collapses back onto the couch, bewildered, but manages to bring herself back into focus again when she realizes her mother has sat down again, this time next to her. "If she didn't forgive you, then what happened?"

Jane realizes that she has no idea how Angela even found out what happened- she guesses it was Frankie, but the fact that she hasn't even wondered about it until now is a testament to what a mess she is. "We…disagreed. I apologized but it didn't seem to do any good," she admits, pressing the pads of her thumbs into the scars cradled in the centers of her palms. Since Hoyt's scalpels she's had that habit whenever something's really bothering her, and she doesn't usually notice. The only reason she does this time is because her hands suddenly hurt like _hell_, like all the hurt she's feeling everywhere else has centered right in them and she can't get rid of it.

And then Ma takes her hands and everything feels a little bit better. She also kind of feels like she's sixteen and has dumped been dumped at her junior prom again, but that's beside the point. Her hands don't hurt as much when her mother's squeezing them half to death. Her eyes, do, though, because she's fighting back tears again, for only the second time since the shooting.

"Oh, Janie. It's gonna work out, you'll see. You and Dr. Isles are too close for this to last long."  
>"Ma, you don't understand, it's like…I've lost her already."<p>

She never opens up like this anymore. Maybe, occasionally, to Maura- whispered confessions, _I've never been more scared in all my life,_ earnest and deliberate truths she'd rather keep in her head, _you're nothing like that monster, _things she really ought to have kept to herself, at any rate. But she never does this with her mother. She hasn't for years

And Maura's absence has sent her straight back to this, to being too vulnerable and confused and helpless that only her mother's voice can even begin to calm her down. "No you haven't. Sweetie, friendship is like…"

There's a pause while Angela thinks up an appropriate analogy and Jane takes a deep, shaky breath, fighting her tears away for good. She's not ready to cry over Maura yet. She doesn't know if she'll ever give up enough to cry over it. "Friendship is a lot like marriage." Some analogy. "You don't just choose someone to be your friend on a whim, you know? Someone like you doesn't, anyway, you're a Rizzoli, it means something to you." Jane has to bite her tongue to keep from mentioning the divorce, but she managed, somehow or another.

"You're friends with Dr. Isles for a reason. People come into each others lives for reasons and I think you two are far too good for one another for something like this to ruin it. I know you're afraid she won't forgive you, because you already apologized, but honey, she's _already_ forgiven you. She just doesn't know it yet."

She feels the slight smile on her face before she knows what's happening, before she can even register that the weight she's been carrying is a little less now. It might not be the best analogy, and her Ma might not be the most eloquent, but in her own way she has one hell of a way with words. She always has. Jane's at the brink of tears again when she lets her mother pull her into a bone-crushing hug, and she closes her eyes tightly and tries to forget, for a second, what's happened in the last hour or so of her life.

The problem is, she can't stop applying that speech to Maura in another sense. In the sense that makes her think maybe she should have been paying better attention all these months- maybe she would have caught it earlier and realized she was attracted to Maura, and that Maura was attracted to her. And if she had, she wonders, would it have changed anything?

"Thanks, ma." 

.,.

She wakes up to the phone ringing practically in her ear. She's left it by her pillow again, because she'd spent most of last night checking again and again to see if Maura had texted her. She's only barely awake when she picks it up, grunting some kind of a greeting into the mouthpiece as she blinks repeatedly.

"Jane, it's Frost."

Well, _that_ wakes her up. She rolls over and checks the clock- 5:30 am. She doesn't even have to wake up for another three hours to get to work by 9. And if there's one thing on the planet Earth that Jane Rizzoli absolutely cannot stand, it's being woken up before she's decided it's time to wake up.

"Jesus _Christ_ Frost, it's not even light outside!"  
>"It's important."<p>

She scoffs, switching the phone to her other hand.  
>"It better be!"<br>"It's Dean."  
>"…oh."<p>

She wishes she felt something. She wishes her stomach dropped at the mention of his name and the chance this news might be bad news. She wishes it's his face that flashes into her mind when she thinks of the hospital and the night he was shot. Instead, it's Maura she remembers, as she always does.

"He's stable, Jane. He's asking for you."

_Of course he is._

Jane clutches the phone so tightly she can feel her scars start to hurt again. It takes her almost a full minute to work up the courage to ask what she needs to know.

"What about Doyle?"

Frost's silence tells her everything she needs to know. She slumps back against the headboard, defeated, eyes falling closed as she lets out a breath. Any hope she might have had for Maura's forgiveness is gone. "He's still in the ICU," Frost tells her, apology absolutely dripping from his voice, "his vitals are stable, but nobody knows how long that'll last. He's not conscious." The rest of his sentence, though unspoken, is just as clear- _and he's probably never going to be conscious ever again_.

.,.

When she looks at Dean, lying there sunken into his hospital bed like he's closer to 80 than 40, she tries her hardest to force herself to worry for him. She stares at the bandage on his chest and thinks about the bullet that hit him and tries to feel the way he'd expect her to feel- scared, anxious, anything but betrayed. The fact that he broke his word is more important to her than anything else besides the fact that Maura could be a room or two down, checking on Doyle, and she can't go to check.

Maura's the one that she wants. Part of her assures her that it's always been that way, that's it's not really a recent development that the medical examiner is always the first thing on her mind. She remembers waking up next to Dean and immediately thinking of Maura alone in the hospital and wonders how long she was so blatantly obvious to everyone but herself.

He stirs, eventually, though she's not sure how long it is after she arrives. She forgot her watch in her rush to leave the apartment without waking her mother, and there's no clock in the room, presumably to help the patient sleep without reminding them that their time is running out, whether or not they're leaving healthy.

"Hey, stranger." She returns his smile with a vague version of her own and when he extends his hand she takes it in her own, but it feels too cumbersome and calloused to be anything but dead weight. "Frost said you were asking for me."

She sees the flicker in his eyes that says, as it has in the past, that her straightforwardness amuses him. She doesn't like that about him. She wishes it would bother him more. It bothers Maura quite a lot when she skips the 'formalities' she usually takes in teasing and joking around, because unlike everyone else, Maura realizes that it's not just a joke when she makes it. It's something else. A coping mechanism or something.

There's nothing left to cope with as far as Dean's concerned. "I was," he admits, quirking an eyebrow at her, "why, are you surprised?" His humor has always been dry, but the bullet wound seems to have made that more obvious. Either that or he has some kind of inkling as to where this conversation is about to go. "Not really," she replies, without missing a beat, "but you shouldn't bother."

When she'd told him there might be 'someone else' in her life, she'd been thinking of Casey. The truth is, though, there isn't really anything between her and Casey at all. He's too far away and he's gone for too long for anything to come of what was really just some fumbling kisses and a night spent feeling at least a little bit more safe than she did alone. He wasn't a 'somebody else'. _Maura_ was a 'somebody else', or she could have been, at least.

"Like I told you before, there's…there's someone else. And you deserve better than this," she adds, for good measure and because some part of her believes it. "I'm a mess, and you deserve better than that."

The agent Dean she knows would accept this rejection with the same stoic air he accepts everything else. In a move that only proves her point even more, his reaction is much more caustic and shocking than she ever could have expected.

"You're probably right. It would be too hard for me to maintain a relationship with someone who put a friend's feelings before the arrest of a known crime lord."

To keep herself from lunging forward and yanking the IV out of his arm so she can beat the crap out of him, she lets go of his hand and leaves without a backward glance. There's a certain kind of anger that goes with being told exactly what you know you don't want to hear. It's the kind of anger that makes you do stupid things like find the other door marked with a "D" and pushing inside without permission.

She's not surprised to see Maura sitting stiffly by Doyle's besides. Somehow it seems obvious that she'd be there, obvious that she'd want to watch over the dying criminal that fathered her. Maura looks up and for the first time since she crawled into the ambulance behind Doyle her reaction to Jane isn't flat. It's razor sharp, all of it- "You can't be here," she leaps to her feet and immediately hassles Jane out of the room and into the one across the hall, which is empty and silent and smells like rubbing alcohol and new plastic.

"What are you doing here?"  
>"Looking for you."<br>"You shouldn't. You really- you shouldn't."

Jane takes a few steps closer to see if Maura backs away. She does, but only a little bit, not enough to matter. "Don't do this, Jane." The detective raises an eyebrow but doesn't move an inch. "Do what? Find you and make you talk to me?" Maura stiffens and something about the resolve in her eyes is more attractive than it is abrasive. "You can't make me do anything. You're only here to…investigate…what happened when you tried to talk to me about the shooting."

"What if I want this?"

Maura furrows her brows and looks around briefly as if to say, 'what, _this?_ an empty antiseptic room filled with nothing but filtered air and two bodies and too many feelings?' and Jane doesn't have a chance to continue before she's cut off with something she didn't expect.

"You don't want me like I want you."  
>"What in the hell is that even supposed to mean?"<br>"It means what it means. You don't have any idea…you can't just decide you're interested in what's going on just because I slipped up."

There's a split second where Jane realizes she has two choices. She can either pursue Maura's forgiveness, or defend her newly uncovered 'feelings' for what they are- just that. Nothing less. She chooses the first, because she's not as good with words and she doesn't know what she'd do if Maura proved her wrong.

"That man is a criminal," she says, gesturing toward the hallway and Doyle's room. "Two months ago you hated his guts, now you hate me for taking him out? What on earth did he do to get your forgiveness? Tell me," she half-hisses, "because I sure as hell need to know how to do what he did."

Maura's reply comes rapid-fire and Jane has to brace herself to take it in stride. "That _man_ was the only man that loved me unconditionally my entire life, even when I know that he did. He kept track of me, he watched over me, he made damn sure I had a good life and in a lot of ways he was more of a father than the one who adopted me."

Jane knows she's been out-talked and changes tactics again, barely sparing a glance into the empty hallway before backing Maura up into the counter against the far wall, leaning forward. "You knew I couldn't be charged for murder," she says, coming to that same realization, herself. "I didn't know he was out of bullets, so I shot him out of self-defense, as far as the court is concerned. I'm a good cop, he's a bad guy, and they're not gonna charge me. You _knew_ that when you told me they could."

Jane can see Maura's jaw clench and wonders what the names of those little muscles are. She's never noticed them in anyone else before, but Maura works her jaw for a few seconds, long enough that in their current position it's hard to miss. It doesn't help that Jane can't stop thinking about her lips for a long enough time to stay convincingly angry.

"I realized it later," is Maura's eventual half-whispered reply. "I don't lie, you know that. At the time I said it, it seemed like a definite possibility."

Because that doesn't excuse anything, and because there doesn't seem to be much left to do, Jane pushes them further into shadow and tilts her head down to close the space between them. As if it's choreographed Maura ducks out of her grasp and pushes her away firmly, shaking her head, retreating into the fluorescent lights of the hallway. "You're not going to do this to me," she says, still backing away. "You're not going to do this, and neither am I."

She gets the last word. She always does, and Jane's not too disappointed to leave empty-handed. She has a legitimate reason to leave Dean behind, at any rate, and she's gotten some kind of a response out of Maura, which has to count for something.

She's just not sure if she's taken a step forward or two steps back.


	4. like chasing the very last train

The next morning Angela opens breakfast conversation by mentioning flippantly that she's decided to move in with Tommy.

Jane spits out part of her omelet, much to her mother's obvious disgust, and stares at her until she decides to elaborate. "He's doing so well, sweetheart, and I just feel like maybe if I go and keep him company he'll stay out of trouble."

"So, what, you're gonna live with him the rest of his life to keep him out of jail? This is why he never grew the fu-"  
>"Jane!"<br>"God, Ma, do you even hear yourself?"  
>"I know what I'm doing."<p>

Jane watches the foam on the surface of her coffee swirl and rise against the sides of the mug. She remembers vividly Maura saying, once, that the youngest member of the family is often coddled. The thought of Maura gets her thinking, and her next realization comes as suddenly as a punch to the gut, knocking her just as breathless.

"This isn't even about Tommy, is it?"  
>"What?"<p>

It's ridiculous, because it's not like she even wanted her mother to live with her in the first place, but the reason behind her changing her mind is what makes it feel like a betrayal. "This is about Maura. You're taking her side."

"There are no sides," Angela says, suddenly taking a diplomatic stance but refusing stubbornly to meet her daughter's gaze, "this isn't a war, Janie. And I'm not….agreeing with her. It's just difficult." Jane snorts derisively, pushing her plate away and dropping her head into her hands. "Sure. Supporting your daughter is difficult. I get it."

"I do support you. You were doing your job, you were just…doing what you knew you were supposed to do. But that doesn't change how Maura feels about it, you know."

"I didn't know that, tell me more."

"You know what, don't be a smart aleck. I'm still…on good terms with Doctor Isles, I shared a living space with her for quite some time and I don't think it's fair to take sides, and Tommy's the neutral option."  
>"God forbid it should look like you're siding with me. And- actually, you said there <strong>weren't<strong> any sides," Jane looks up accusingly, having caught the loophole Angela left out, "if there weren't any sides then you wouldn't even have thought about leaving."

"You're a grown woman. You need your privacy."  
>"And Tommy doesn't."<br>"Don't make this harder than it has to be, babe. I'm just trying to make things easier for both of you."

Breakfast forgotten, Jane rises from her chair and grabs her blazer from the other end of the counter, holstering her gun and turning away so Angela won't see the angry, defiant tears gathering at the corners of her eyes.

"Whatever."

.,.

Maura's still not back, not that anyone expects any differently of her. And because it's day two, Jane gets enough space that she feels like she can breathe, especially when a call comes in about a woman found stuffed beneath her bed in a garment bag and the scene is devoid of prints. Having something to focus on other than Maura makes things so much easier for her. Having someone else's hurt to tend to, and a puzzle to put back together, almost makes her forget who's missing until Pike shows up and makes a mess of the whole thing, the way Maura never would have.

He even sneezes on the goddamn corpse.

The day gets progressively worse. The murder isn't exactly challenging, and for the most part the most difficult part of her day is tracking down the husband, who immediately caves under pressure and admits that he didn't mean to kill her, only to 'teach her a lesson'. With a frying pan. Because apparently that's what you do when you really, really love somebody.

The formalities take forever, and Jane finds no joy in them, because they fail to distract her and Pike keeps reminding her whenever she manages to forget. She wonders, before she can stop herself, if Maura's ever going to come back.

.,.

For the sake of keeping herself sane, the first thing she does when she gets to her empty apartment, after she feeds her dog, is open a beer. She doesn't do anything else. Doesn't touch the remote, the phone, anything, until that beer is finished. Usually she changes out of her work clothes, but she's afraid if she gets up she'll go right to the phone and call either Maura or Ma, neither of which is a good idea.

She contemplates whether or not punching the punching bag for an hour will help but can't tear herself away from her own self-pity long enough to do it. Jo retreats to her bedroom, as she often does nowadays, because she seems to prefer Jane's bed to the dog bed. Actually, she seems to like Jane's bed a hell of a lot more than Jane likes it nowadays, which is to say that Jane isn't sure when the last time was that she actually slept.

The phone rings and she answers it before she even checks to see who it is, with her standard, gruff "Rizzoli", expecting that she'll have to go back to work any minute. When Frankie's voice is the voice that answers her, she knows what he's going to say before he says it.

"Janie, it's me."  
>"Frankie-"<br>"It's Doyle."  
>"Please don't."<br>"He's dead."  
>"I didn't want to know," she tells him, realizing the moment it's out of her mouth how true it is.<p>

"You would have found out anyway, I figured I'd tell you before anyone else did."  
>"You mean before Maura did."<br>"I'm not sure that she knows yet. Korsak was just there and he's the one who told me."  
>"Who's going to call her?"<br>"I dunno. Him, I guess."

She sighs, resting her head in one hand and squeezing her eyes shut. This isn't the first time she's killed a man. This won't be the last time she kills a man.

But it still feels like the end of something.

"Thanks."

.,.

Fifteen minutes after she hangs up the phone, an hour and a half after she leaves BPD, there are three sharp raps on her door. She knows before she even gets up that it's Maura. She doesn't know, even after she gets up, why Maura would even bother coming straight to her, Jane has no intention of letting the whole 'kiss but don't tell' thing go, even now, when Doyle's just been pronounced. Maura more than likely knew he was going to die the moment he fell, and Jane's too confused and betrayed to feel too sorry for her. The second she thinks it she regrets it.

And then she opens the door. Maura has a look in her eyes that Jane's never seen before, something bright and wild and angry. Not angry in the way she's seen Mara angry before, but in a new way, in a way that she knows instinctively has no relationship to facts or thoughts or anything but feelings. And the feeling she's sure drove Maura to her apartment was hate. "I'm sorry," she says, before Maura literally _pushes_ her back into the apartment and follows her inside. She's apologizing more for what she's been thinking than for what she's done. "I'm…what are you doing?"

"Locking the door," is the only answer she gets. While Maura's back is briefly to her it registers that Maura's not here to yell at her and she's certainly not here to cry on her shoulder. She doesn't even have time to be shocked again before Maura turns around and practically jumps her. It's not like the first kiss, which had been too quick and confusing for both of them. It's lips and teeth and tongues and Maura pushing, pushing until Jane feels her back hit the wall and is so disoriented that she's not sure anymore where she is in her own apartment.

Jane's fingers curl into the blonde's jacket at the waist, but her grip is nothing compared to the grip Maura has on the collar of her shirt. As much as Jane wants this, as much as she wants _Maura_, she can't help but feel like this is wrong. Mostly because Maura still hates her. "Maura, stop. Maur-" she's cut off by another searing kiss that's too hard to pull away from. Maura pushes forward again and Jane can feel all of her body with each breath they take, each shallow pant. "Stop talking."

She'd be lying if she said that Maura's sudden bossiness didn't turn her on. She's used to having control, but she doesn't mind not having it, not really. Not when Maura's undoing her buttons with deft little hands and has her shirt off before she can think twice about it. She wants to talk. She wants to know what Maura's going to do if she talks. She doesn't have the guts to actually do it yet. Maura's fingernails dig into her lower back and she gasps, pulling at Maura's jacket until she's rid of it, but there's still too much clothing between them.

She doesn't get the chance to do anything else, because Maura slams her wrists back into the wall and bites down on her lower lip. She doesn't dare move her hands until after Maura's gotten her own shirt off, and even then she's hesitant, because she's not sure how far Maura's willing to go. She's fairly sure that Maura's only doing this so that she feels something, and she knows she shouldn't let herself be used like that, but considering how badly she wants this, and how recently she's realized it, there's no way she's going to say anything about it.

Maura doesn't protest when Jane's hands find her waist, but it's probably only because she's too busy unbuttoning Jane's slacks and pushing them down off her hips. Jane kicks her boots off, then pulls Maura's hips back into hers. The medical examiner's moan mirrors her own, but it doesn't seem to be her job to get Maura's skirt off. The second she tries to reach for her zipper she gets another lip-biting, wrist-smashing thing, and this time she fights back.

She pushes Maura's hands away and switches their positions, catching on to the animalistic rage that's taken over her best friend, using her frustration with Dean's betrayal to channel it into the passion that's growing between them. She manages to get Maura's skirt off without too much trouble, or at least without anything that feels like trouble at the time. After a second, though, she realizes that Maura has nimbly undone her bra while she wasn't paying attention, and it's off of her shoulders and on the floor before she can register it. She refuses to be outdone. She presses a leg between Maura's and is delighted by the frustrated little whine she gets in response.

Maura's urging her on with every move she makes, dragging her nails down Jane's back and rocking her hips forward, seeking friction and coming in contact with Jane's thigh. Jane has other plans. One hand splays out on the wall beside Maura to balance and brace her, and the other slips under the waistband of Maura's panties to tease her.

Still, control is only an illusion when it comes to this sort of thing, and Jane knows, some way or another, that she's not really in control of anything. She's doing this for Maura, and she's doing it because Maura has all but commanded her to do it. The fact that she wants to has almost nothing to do with it at this point, and strangely enough, that's okay with her. She already regrets just about everything that's happened in the last couple of days, and none of those things felt nearly as good as this when she did them.

The second her fingers find their destination Maura arches forward off the wall, her nails digging in so far into Jane's lower back that she's about 80% sure she's bleeding. Jane's hand moves forward at the same time Maura's hips do, and just like that, as if it had been practiced, they're entirely in sync. It's not as if Jane usually has any sense of rhythm, so the fact that their bodies match up so perfectly like that in only a few seconds in is baffling.

And Maura, who is usually so demure with her language, seems to be holding back a few choice words as her hips come forward again and again. What she _does_ say, over and over, is Jane's name. And even though Jane knows she still hates her, the way she says it ranges from frustrated to affectionate to breathless to…God help them, even tender.

The situation is clearly even more fucked up than Jane initially thought it was, and she cares even less now about that than she did before. It occurs to Jane that what she really wants is to savor this, is to be able to kiss every inch of the wonderfully warm, toned, writhing expanse of Maura's body. The fact that she's never done anything like this with a woman before means almost nothing to her. She resents Maura using her and she resents herself for giving in without a fight and her resentment boils over into anger and that anger surges forward into passion and that passion is what drives her on.

.,.

Maura came to Jane expecting all of this.

She knows that later she'll hate herself for admitting it, but she knows exactly how to play Jane, the way a skilled musician knows every quirk and tone of the instrument they've learned so well. She knows, has always known, that Jane does everything she does with an exhausting amount of passion. She knows that Jane is prone to frustration. She knows that Jane has the biggest heart, figuratively speaking, of anyone she's ever met, and she knows without a shadow of a doubt that Jane will never deny her anything.

And she needs to feel. She needs someone to hurt her or at least do _something_ that will make her feel a fraction of what she should feel, now that Doyle's dead. She needs a lot of things that Jane isn't giving her, and she keeps hoping that the more violent she is, the more Jane will reciprocate, but she knows that won't work. Jane cares too much to do any real harm. That's the irony, actually, that Maura loves Jane so much that it's taken over everything in her life and yet she's the one that doesn't have a problem hurting her lover. Physically _and_ emotionally.

If it's going to bother her that Jane refused to hurt her back, it's taking a hell of a long time to get to that point. And around the time she has any of these thoughts is the same time that Jane renders her mostly incoherent and half-conscious, her entire body consumed with arousal and hunger and the power she holds, none of which is enough to satisfy her. So she stops thinking.

She rocks her hips forward and her head hits the wall behind her and she doesn't even hear Jane's name as it tumbles from her lips.

.,.

She leaves.

After she comes apart with a shuddering cry pinned against Jane's living room wall, after she catches her breath and lets go of Jane's hips, after she slips wordlessly back into her clothes, she leaves. All the frustration has drained out of Jane and left her empty and shaking with the realization that she was never actually angry to begin with. Maura, for her own part, is almost satisfied, slipping out into the tepid night. She even makes it all the way back to her apartment before the guilt sets in.

.,.


	5. tried to forgive but it's not enough

The badge makes a soft noise every time Jane turns it over between her fingers, and, other than the soft snoring of the dog lying at her feet; it's the only noise in the apartment. She has the same urge she does when she's facing a particularly tough case- to break out the Hoover- but she resists it. She resists it because her life is not a homicide case and because she knows she'll only wake up her neighbors if she gives in. The thing is, she can't help but treat this like a homicide case. It's the only possible way to think about it in detail, logically and realistically, without losing her mind.

When she leans back into the couch, the marks Maura left behind on her lower back sting like she's doused them with salt water. They're the only thing that has her convinced any of the past hour and a half even happened- the before, the 'incident', the after. It all seems too sudden and too disjointed to be real.

The longer she thinks about it the more frustrated she gets. She's trying to decide if she's always had feelings for Maura and no matter what way she looks at it the answer is a resounding 'yes'. Hell, she went to **yoga** for Maura. She ran a marathon in a spandex suit with 'PUKE written on the front. And it was only because he was threatening Maura that Jane found the strength in her to kill Charles Hoyt. In fact, she'll be honestly surprised if pretty much everyone else hasn't already guessed- Frost and Korsak at the very least.

But she missed it. The 'hero detective' of BPD, the youngest detective ever to join her precinct- it went completely over her head. She wonders if Maura would see the irony in that and then decides she probably already has. The badge slips through her fingers when she fumbles it slightly and it wakes up Jo, who snuffles for a moment before getting up and moving to the other side of the room, giving Jane a look that could only be described as sympathetic.

At the very least she knows to keep her mouth shut. She knows better than to go looking for Maura, to call her up and babble something semi-coherent about how she thinks she might have been in love with her since… since a long time ago. Best-case scenario, Maura wouldn't believe her. Worst-case scenario, it would make things even worse.

.,.

There's no funeral.

Maura thinks Doyle probably would have wanted it that way, honestly, and she's glad she doesn't have to see people there for her sake; glad that there won't be a forlorn little group to remind her of who her father really was. This way is much easier, cleaner. In an ironic twist of fate it's a beautiful day when she watches them lower the coffin into the ground.

She would have gone alone to the memorial, but Barry insisted she have someone with her, and if not Jane, why not him? It's very sweet of him, she admits, and once she's actually there with him she realizes what a relief it is not to be alone. It's a warm day for Boston in November, warm enough that she has to shrug out of her jacket after ten minutes in the sun.

"He wasn't a bad man," she says finally, and for the first time, she believes it herself. She's picking at her cuticles- an old habit that she broke in college, which, following the shooting, seems to have returned with a vengeance. "He did bad things, but he wasn't a bad man." It reminds her of how she had justified Tommy's actions to Jane, months ago. Justified her supposed 'interest' in him- interest that, if it had existed at all, had been driven mostly by his similarities to his sister.

Barry nods, folding his coat over his arm. She wonders if it's a polite nod or if he believes her, if he agrees with her. Jane had spent time justifying Doyle to her, before she had been able to see the good in Doyle on her own, but she can't imagine that's what Jane remembered when she pulled the trigger. She doesn't want to imagine that's what Jane remembered about him if her instinct was to shoot him. In fact, she'd prefer not to think about Jane at all, because as angry as she is, she also feels horribly guilty, and she doesn't have the emotional capacity to juggle everything at once. "I can believe that," the detective's voice breaks into her thoughts, softly enough that she's not sure she heard him right until he continues, "he made **you**, after all, he couldn't have been all bad."

She's always thought of it the other way around. She's always thought of it in terms of _his_ affect on _her_- if he were capable of killing, wasn't she, too, a killer at heart? But the way Barry said it gave her another idea, one that offered at least a little bit of comfort: If she had any generosity, any tenderness, any fundamental _goodness_ in her, then maybe he had, as well.

And maybe not. "It's possible," she temporizes, even though she wishes she could stop herself, "but sciences suggests that children are the products of their environment, so it's more likely that my…'good' traits came from the parents who raised me."

She looks up and sees that Barry is watching her, jacket over his shoulder, both hands in his pockets. He shrugs where Jane would have made some caustic remark about her being the human reincarnation of Darwin's journals (although Locke would have been a more accurate choice), and says, without realizing how true it is, "then you have nothing to worry about, right? I mean, if the good parts couldn't have come from him, the bad couldn't have, either."

She smiles; until she realizes that means what she's done to Jane has come from _her_ and no one else.

.,.

Having Maura back at BPD actually manages to make things worse.

Jane avoids her as much as she can, and when they absolutely _have_ to interact, they do so as coldly and professionally as possible. There's no animosity between them- it's not as if Maura is snippy with her or anything- but there's no joy in the job anymore, not when Jane feels like she has to tiptoe around everyone else's feelings.

Frost seems to have taken Maura's side. Not that there are sides, she reminds herself, just that Frost has replaced her in the sense that he's the one, out of the two of them, that communicates things to her. Meanwhile, Korsak is 'checking up' on her every five minutes like he's waiting for her to turn around and spill her guts, tell him everything, down to each little detailed feeling she gets whenever Maura looks away from her.

She hits a breakthrough on their case- a murder victim's teenage son is missing- but when she goes to find Frost, his desk is empty. She finds Korsak in the café, where she intentionally ignores her mother, ignores precursory greetings and gets right to the point.

"Where's Frost?"  
>"Lunch break."<br>"I need to find him."  
>"They went to some new organic seafood place or something."<br>" _They_?"  
>"He and Maura."<p>

She pauses, unsure of what she even wants to say. "What, are they like, dating, or something?"

"You're askin' the wrong guy." He shrugs, stirs his coffee, and makes the fatal mistake of sparing a glance in Angela's direction. She pounces on it immediately.

"And since when do you eat lunch here?"  
>"Hey, the food's really not that bad!"<p>

She leaves without another word because it's the only option she can take that won't get her fired or kicked out of her own family.

.,.

Her life goes through a phase of weird fast-forwarding, the kind of thing that happens when every day is just like the one before and the one after, where things are the same kind of shitty every waking moment. The only thing that changes nightly is what she dreams about- it alternates.

Sometimes she dreams about Maura. Sometimes she dreams that she didn't take the shot- either that Frost did, or that Doyle had lowered his gun and she had let him go. Sometimes she has a stranger dream, a more abstract dream, one that she doesn't understand and isn't sure she wants to.

It always starts exactly the same- she's in a squad car. There's always an emergency, and it always involves Maura, but she's never sure exactly what the emergency was when she wakes up- just that it was urgent, and Maura's life depended on her getting there in time. And then, somehow, invariably, she ends up driving the car off of a dock, either it's out of control or it's necessary for some reason- and her seatbelt won't come undone. She struggles with it and the water comes all around and her arms stop working. She looks up and it's Maura's face she sees through the water- she reaches, she sinks, and then she wakes up.

One morning, when she wakes up from that dream, something's different. She always wakes up gasping for air, sweating, shaking, but this time there's a sour taste in her mouth. She realizes in the nick of time that she's about to puke her brains out and heaves herself out of bed and into the bathroom, which she hardly reaches before she loses it.

So she's upset. So what? She doesn't think about it, until it happens again, two days later.

And again the next day.

.,.

It's just a precaution, she reminds herself, rocking back on her heels as she peers around the edge of the aisle, paranoid that someone she knows will see her. _I'm only doing this so I can sleep at night_. She can't actually be…_yeah, it's not possible. _Even in her head she can't say it.

She grabs a carton off the shelf and walks briskly to the counter, buys it with cash, and retreats to the pharmacy bathroom without taking a breath. When she sits down she lets out the breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. She leans back and takes another deep breath, and then she waits.

Two minutes pass. She watches the minute hand on her watch move and empties her mind as if that will make the outcome what she needs it to be. After the second minute, she moves her thumb away from the little plastic window.

She lets out another shaky breath and leans forward, tossing the test into the little mini-trash can beside her and dropping her head into her hands.

.,.

There isn't anything abstract about the dream she has that night, although it's exactly the same dream she's been having for at least two weeks. This time as she's drowning, she kicks the seatbelt free, reaches up through the water, and Maura's hand clasps around hers.

She wakes up before she's out of the water.

.,.

**A/N**: Wow. _Wow._ See, this is why I love this fandom, you guys are so so so supportive and I appreciate it immensely. It's been a rough week or so for me, because I'm juggling school, homework, rehearsals, and test prep, but here's five of nine! This was a rough one, I know, but trust me, okay? It's going to get worse before it gets better, but the end of this is just so fluffy that I encourage you to buckle your seatbelts and brace for the angst. Thanks for all the reviews. And, yes, there will be another M scene, and it won't be angry, I promise. But it's a ways off.


	6. oh it tears me up

**A/N**: At least this was a quicker update, haha. Enjoy the little bits of fluff you can manage to pull from the wreckage. This is essentially the second shoe dropping- the rest of the way out gets fluffier with each chapter, so, once you've finished this one, congratulations! You've survived the 'worst' of it. I put worst in quotation marks because someone else out there has to be a masochist like me: the angst is my favorite part to write _and_ to read. This is six out of nine chapters I have planned. Thank you so much for all your kind reviews.

.,.

She makes the decision before she has time to think about her mother would say.

She makes the decision before she has the time to think about Catholic school and innumerable sermons of guilt.

She makes the decision without acknowledging anything but her job, her lifestyle, and the egotistical FBI agent who she knows would be no better a parent than she would be.

.,.

She knows Maura's schedule inside and out. She knows when Maura has yoga, when she has Pilates, when she usually schedules her monthly facial- and she books the appointment between two and three pm on a Friday so that it doesn't conflict.

She doesn't want to be alone.

More specifically, when she _is_ alone, she's terrified. Sitting in silence at any point of the day drives her crazy with guilt. At one point she thinks she hears a second heartbeat and she panics before she realizes that's not possible- before she realizes it's way too early for any of that. Even still, the heartbeat haunts her, and she aches inside and out. It's a dull, throbbing ache, radiating from her navel, arcing along her spine, settling in her shoulders. She hurts whenever she's not working.

The night after she makes the appointment Jane paces her apartment, thumbs pressing insistently into the marks on the palms of her hands, her left cradling her right. These are not the hands of someone who could ever hold a child safely; these are not the hands of a mother. They are the hands of a fighter. They are the hands of a _cop_.

They are her hands. And even if there's a part of her that very suddenly and very violently wishes they were not, she's not the kind of person capable of pretending to be something she isn't. In a way, she supposes, the _decision_ is doing the unborn little human being a sort of favor. In the future there might come a time- though she doubts it- where her life is accommodating, where she has someone willing to stay _home_ with a child, or at least to held her out; in the future she might be braver, or else the future might be less dangerous- and in that future, she can almost imagine herself with a child.

But not now. Not today.

.,.

Maura is reading a book on protist lifecycles when the phone rings.

She's been spending most of her time trying not to think about Jane and failing miserably. She wishes her memory of Jane wasn't overtaken by memories of more specific things; she wishes that the smell of coffee and a sleep-roughened voice were the things at the forefront of her mind. Instead, she alternates between remembering the sound and smell of a gun firing, and the way Jane had so easily been able to push her away and immediately press her back into the wall.

If she doesn't distract herself, her mind wanders. She's not in the habit of using her imagination, but Jane has changed that, along with everything else. She can't stop thinking- what would have happened if she had let Jane take the lead? She was sure the detective would have taken her to her bedroom, but she wasn't sure of anything after that. Would a gentler touch have fixed it all? Would chaste kisses and whispered words have softened her in the least? She doesn't know. And it didn't happen that way anyway, so she ought to think about something else.

The 'something else', as it turns out, is protist growth, until the phone rings.

Without looking at it she answers, marking the sentence she stops on with her fingertip.

"Isles."

"Maura," comes the too-familiar voice from the other end of the phone, and then a catching-of-breath, a hitch, a broken sigh.

Maura stiffens and closes the book. She grips the phone tighter and says nothing, too confused by the tumult of anger and longing at odds inside her.

"Maura, I…I need you."

.,.

Jane knows she looks every bit as exhausted as she feels. Maura picks her up right on time, of course, but she isn't really ready yet. All the doubt and anxiety she'd avoided by making the appointment while still in shock has come back to kick her ass, leaving her sleepless, nauseous, nails bitten down to the quick. Maura doesn't provide much relief as they drive, just as she hadn't during the phone call.

"Please," Jane had prompted her, fighting to keep a level tone. "Yes," the ME had answered after some time, "Yes, I'll do it."

Jane's still not entirely sure that _she_ can do it. The only other people in the waiting room are a young girl- no older than 17 or 18- and her boyfriend, whose fingers are knotted so tightly with hers that their knuckles are white. Jane wonders if that anchors them, wonders if _she_ would feel anchored, too, with someone's hand to squeeze half to death. Instead of thinking about Maura's hands (the hands that saved Frankie's life, and probably hers, too), she clasps her hands just above her belly button and laces her fingers together.

Jane doesn't believe in miracles. But when Maura breaks the silence, just as the young couple is called back into the sterile hallway…she comes pretty damn close.

"It's been three and a half weeks," she says, leaning a little closer so she's speaking under her breath. Jane looks up and sees that Maura's eyes are on her hands. "Give or take a day. It's _very_ early on. At this stage, it's really not a human being, at least **most** scientists agree on that. It's not a fetus, it's hardly even an embryo- it's about this big," she holds up her thumb and index finger in a circle, about the shape of the stupid chocolate coins that are all over the Dirty Robber on St. Patrick's Day, "and it's a genderless cluster of parasitic cells."

Jane half-smiles for a moment, just because it's so very _Maura_ to think that would help.

.,.

In truth, Maura doesn't think she's helping very much. She tries for two reasons: because she's cause Jane plenty of grief recently, and because she hates to see Jane so exhausted. So scared. So…_defeated_.

"Will it hurt?" Jane asks. She won't meet Maura's gaze. She's even blushing slightly, as if her vulnerability is embarrassing. For Jane, she supposes, vulnerability is something she's not used to feeling, much less showing. Certainly **Maura** has never seen her so fragile. "Only a little."

She immediately wishes she'd lied. Jane flushes slightly, leans back in her chair. "Will they let you go in with me?" she asks, and Maura watches as she presses her thumbs against the scars on the back of her hands. "Given my degree, probably," she answers after a brief hesitation. "Would…you _like_ me to go with you?"

She's curious about the idea of that, especially after how stubbornly she's been avoiding Jane. There's no reason for it, not really. Now, with Jane so broken, thinking about Doyle hardly hurts. What **she** did hurts much more.

_Are Jane's feelings real? As real as I know mine are?_

_Is it even __**possible**__ that Jane could still want to be with me?_

"Yes," Jane rasps. "I don't want to be alone."

.,.

During the entire procedure Jane's grip on Maura's hand doesn't falter. Maura doesn't mind. She's still trying to figure out how Jane could possibly want her there. Besides which, she's pretty sure the marks she left on Jane's back were much worse than any Jane's blunt fingernails might be leaving on her palm.

.,.

Jane is silent the entire drive back to her apartment. She expects Maura to say something, especially after she'd been so talkative back at the clinic, but whatever magic that was that made her reach out seems to be gone, maybe forever. Jane doesn't want to think about what just happened, what she just did, but without Maura to distract her, it's unavoidable.

She feels so empty. She feels so _confused_. Did she do the right thing? She needs someone to assure her that she didn't just ruin everything. She needs someone to assure her that if she goes to sleep and wakes up in the morning, the world will still be there. She doesn't even realize she's crying until the car stops moving and Maura fishes some tissues out of her purse and hands them over.

.,.

She's in autopilot because she knows that if she weren't she'd run away. Whatever confidence had come over her in the clinic is gone now. She knows Jane is waiting for her to say she's forgiven, but she's afraid to do it- afraid of what would come next.

She's not ready. As long as she's been waiting for Jane to return her feelings, she's not ready for it yet, and she doesn't know how to put that into words. So she avoids it. She helps Jane up the stairs and takes her inside, unable to think of what to say, or if she should say anything at all. She's never seen Jane cry before and it's scaring her, more than the idea of starting some kind of a _relationship_ scares her. She watches, warily, from the doorway, as Jane flops onto her back on the bed, eyes closed.

When she speaks, it's around a minute later, and Maura isn't even sure she heard her correctly, because her voice is so soft.

"I know you hate me," she starts, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, "and I know I fucked up- majorly fucked up- but can you just…can you just be my best friend again for tonight?"

.,.

She feels stupid as soon as it comes out of her mouth. She's sure Maura's just going to leave right then and there, leave her to wallow in her own self-pity, but she's wrong. And she's never been so glad to be wrong in her entire life.

She feels the bed dip as Maura comes to sit on the other side of it, and before she knows it Maura has tugged her head onto her lap. It's not exactly a best-friend gesture; it's just intimate enough to push the boundary, but not intimate enough for her to actually mention it. Besides which, although Maura seems hesitant to speak, she's certainly not hesitant to run her fingers through Jane's hair, her deft fingers pressing against her scalp.

.,.

Maura focuses on Jane so that she doesn't have to focus on what she feels.

She rests her thumbs at Jane's temples and rests her fingertips on her forehead for a brief moment before slipping her hands up toward Jane's hairline, applying gentle, consistent pressure. She finds the Governor's Vessel meridian- a Chinese theory that places the center of the scalp as the most important and most sensitive- and continues the light circles, watching intently as the stress begins to drain from the detective's face.

Color returns to it, too, and Jane shifts as if she's more comfortable now. Maura knows that tension tends to build up at the back of the neck, but as her hand slides around to relieve that, she feels Jane take in a sharp breath and realizes she's made a mistake. The physical contact is more than just tender, it's inappropriate, especially if she's going to try to avoid complicating things with _feelings_, ones that Jane can't possibly share.

She freezes, and Jane shifts again, this time with a soft but clearly disappointed little grumble. "Maura?"

.,.

Jane has no idea what Maura's doing with her hands, but it's already helped- she's half asleep when the moving stops and she yawns, stretching slightly. She doesn't hurt as much anymore, and she wants Maura to keep going, because the touching is proof that there's something still between them. Maybe that's why Maura stops and clears her throat, displacing her so she can stand. Jane opens her eyes but doesn't sit up. "I should go," Maura says, and Jane's heart sinks.

"Oh. Yeah. Okay. Maur?"  
>"Yes?"<br>"Have you forgiven me yet?"

There's a few moments of silence before Maura answers with a half-smile, "I want to. I have to go." 

.,.

But she doesn't go. How could she _go_? After _that?_ She can't make herself leave. Some way or another she has to push through her cowardice and show Jane that she's still there for her. Even if she's not sure she's ready to give Jane what they both want, she can't just leave. Instead she digs a blanket out of the hall closet and hunkers down on Jane's couch for the night.

She dreams of the ocean.

.,.

This time, Jane kicks the seatbelt free, grabs Maura's hand, and when she wakes up she's already out of the water and onto dry land, back where she belongs: in Maura's arms.


	7. give any more

**A/N**: Hey, ladies and gents. I want to take this opportunity to let you guys know that I had no intention of offending or upsetting anyone. I'm personally pro-choice, not necessarily pro-abortion, and for me it just seemed like the only logical choice Jane could make. Unfortunately it sparked an interesting response, but you know what, that's alright. I feel as if I personally would be going nowhere as a writer if I didn't offend somebody at some point. Just know that I mean to offend NOBODY, and I hope you all can manage to enjoy the rest of what I've cooked up. I appreciate **every** review, good or bad.

For the first time in the past few weeks, when Jane wakes up in the middle of the night it's not because of the dream- it's because she's not used to going to sleep so early. She rolls over onto her stomach and realizes that her mouth is dry. For about two minutes she debates whether or not it's worth it to get out of a warm bed and grab a drink of water.

Eventually thirst wins out, and she shuffles into the hallway, stifling a yawn in the heel of her hand. She stops short when she sees a foot hanging off the edge of the couch, tensing up on instinct and taking a step back before she recognizes the mess of honey-blonde hair on the _other_ end of the couch.

"_I want to. I have to go. _"

Jane shifts slightly so that she can see Maura's profile. In her sleep her brows aren't furrowed the way there are when she's thinking about something- which is most of the time. She looks peaceful. She looks…exhausted.

_She wants to forgive me._

What's she supposed to think of that? How can you _want_ to forgive someone but not actually do it? What is it that's holding Maura back, that's keeping them apart? It makes no sense that Maura stayed the night; Jane's glad that she did, but she needs to understand what's going through her head.

She grabs bottled water out of the fridge and freezes when Maura shuffles around under the thin blanket, as if she could possibly be 'caught' in her own house. The blanket is ancient, a relic of Angela's 'knitting' days, hardly thicker than a summer sheet and fraying all over the place. Without thinking twice about it, Jane goes back into her own room and pulls her spare comforter out of the closet.

Maura shifts slightly again when the blanket falls onto her, but she doesn't wake up. After a second she murmurs something in her sleep and pulls the comforter tighter around her. Satisfied, Jane pads back into her room and crawls into bed.

.,.

Maura knows that lying is wrong.

From the second she was old enough to understand what lying was, it was repeated to her, again and again, that lying is _distinctly_ wrong, that it's one of the worst things anybody could possibly do. So for her own sake, when she's bent over her desk at BPD before anyone else has arrived, scribbling onto a doctor's note…she attempts to convince herself that it's not lying. She's helping.

And it's not like anyone's going to call up a "Dr. Kelekian" to check, either- that would, ordinarily, be _her_ job, should the opportunity arise. In this case, the doctor is fake. The excuse is fake. But Jane is not, and some way or another Maura has to keep her out of the field for three weeks, or she's likely to seriously injure herself.

.,.

TEXT FROM **VINCE**:

hey, i saw ur doctor note, hope ur back feels better

Jane blinks, one foot in a shoe, the other in the air, her blazer half-on, and falls back onto the couch, brow furrowed. About two minutes later, she realizes that the only possible way for that mistake to have been made was for someone to _forge_ a doctor's note keeping her home. There's only one person who knows what she's been through. That person happens to also have a PhD. She taps out a text, kicking off her shoe and toeing off her socks, unable to stop a small smile.

TEXT TO **MAURA**:

so what's wrong with my back?

Less than two minutes and a blazer over the couch later, she gets a reply- simple, clean cut, unapologetic:

TEXT FROM **MAURA**:

Pulled a tendon. Out for two days. Office work for 3 weeks.

_Three weeks_? Jane gives a disbelieving snort and pulls the comforter onto her lap, immediately realizing what a mistake that was when Maura's vanilla-y perfume wafts over her. Does this mean they're friends again? She's not even sure that she _wants_ that, actually. If there's anything she wants, it's for Maura to _believe_ her, to believe that she's not fooling around and that she wants Maura the exact same way Maura claims to want her.

She doesn't know how to prove that, and she's not even going to **try** to do it over text, but at least Maura's talking . She makes it her goal to keep that going for as long as she possibly can. Meanwhile, she's a little sore, and the Advil she took isn't helping enough.

TEXT TO **MAURA**:

i didn't realize you were so worried about my health.

The response is almost immediate, and something about the buzz of her Blackberry is as indignant as Maura's reply:

of course I am.

.,.

At some point in the middle of the day, a few episodes of NCIS later (it's pretty true to life, and some character- Kate something-or-other – reminds her a lot of Maura, if she were a cop), she loses the remote between the cushions of the couch. When she reaches down to get it, her fingers close around a thin chain, the kind of expensive gold that feels like silk. It's a simple little ankle bracelet or something; it's not hers and it's probably more expensive than anything she'd ever spare a second glance at. For a second she's genuinely confused, but then she remembers that Maura spent the night on that couch, and she's even a little bit thankful for the excuse.

God, she hurts. She wishes she were the sort of person who could actually stay still for a few hours.

She waits until the workday is over, but even then, when she gets there, Maura's lights are off. It's not surprising that she's stayed late, if that's the case, but Jane can't help her suspicion. Is Maura out with Frost again? Is something going on? Does she have the right to be upset about it? She knows she doesn't have a claim on Maura, but she _wants _to, and she can't help but feel like that ought to count for something.

When she tries the lock with her spare key, it doesn't work.

Maura has changed the locks.

Jane feels like an abandoned pet, sitting out on that front step with the bracelet hanging off her fingers, but her wait isn't long. A sigh of unwarranted relief leaves her when Maura approaches, arms laden with grocery bags, brow furrowed. She follows Maura inside without an invitation because it's pretty clear to her that she's not going to get one. This sudden coldness, after Maura had been so kind, so _there_…it's frustrating. And in her current state, frustration is only going to lead to something worse.

"You should be resting," Maura says, setting the bags down on the counter. "You shouldn't be driving." Jane ignores her and powers through, the thin gold clutched in one fist. "Isn't forging a doctor's note technically lying?"

"You would do the same for me," Maura replies, still maddeningly resolute.

.,.

Maura is aware of Jane's frustration; she's _acutely_ aware, given that the last time Jane was this frustrated with her she was shoved up against the wall of her apartment half-dressed. She knows Jane wants some kind of reaction from her, but she refuses to give it. If she responds warmly, Jane will know she wants more than a cold working relationship, and if she responds coldly she's sure Jane's going to snap and push her against a wall again, in which case _her_ response will, once again, give her away. So she keeps her tone level and her eyes on the organic vegetables and her hands busy unpacking.

"Stop avoiding me."

Too late. Jane's frustration is too great for her to avoid it, as she feared, and she's forced to look up and meet the detective's gaze, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up just from the way Jane's eyes have already darkened. "I'm not avoiding you." Apparently lying gets easier once you've done it the first time; Jane seems to have the same thought. "Well," she laughs joylessly, "look how good you're getting at lying to me."

She doesn't answer. She can tell that Jane's not finished speaking, and as much as she's terrified of what she's about to hear, she realizes and accepts that she can't run away from it anymore. Jane has come to find her for exactly that reason. Some kind of fear must has made it's way to her facial features, because Jane's expression softens and she steps closer. Instinctively Maura leans away, realizing after a moment that her lower back is pressed against the counter.

How many times in the past few weeks have they been in this position? How many times has Jane had her, literally, with her back against the wall? How many times has she managed to slip away?

"I want what you want," Jane says.

"No," is Maura's sudden reply, "you're projecting; you've seen some inkling of how I felt- feel- and you've convinced yourself you feel the same. It's a natural reaction but you're deceiving yourself."  
>"You can hide behind science all you want," there's the same confident grin she's so used to seeing, the same confidence returning tenfold just as her own wanes, "but I don't see why you would want to."<p>

"It's been scientifically proven that if feelings last for less than four months, it's simple infatuation," Maura replies tersely, straightening up in a vain attempt to mask her insecurity.

Jane gives an exasperated sigh, running a hand through her hair. "Who says it's been less than four months?"  
>"How long has it been, Jane? A few weeks? A few days? A few <em>hours<em>?"

"Try since Hoyt."  
>"You're lying."<br>"I didn't _realize_ it until you kissed me, but I'm not lying."

As she speaks, Jane moves closer, and this time there's nowhere for Maura to run. Even if there had been, she's not sure she would have bothered. Jane's proximity is like some kind of substance, a craving turning slowly but surely into an addiction. Jane tilts her head slightly and moves in at an unmistakable angle, but Maura stops her with one final attempt: "Whatever you're feeling, it's going to go away eventually."

.,.

Jane can't help but laugh a little. It's almost cute how Maura's trying to stop her, when it's so obvious that she's scared, and there's _nothing_ wrong with that. She doesn't have a reply, really, other than the one card she has left to play. She leans in the last few inches and this time Maura doesn't move. In fact, she doesn't hesitate to return the kiss.

"You'll regret this later," Maura breathes against her lips when they part again.  
>"If I don't, can I come back and quote you on that?"<p>

She moves away and holds the bracelet up in her hand, briefly, before she drops it to the counter. "You left this at my place. I just wanted to drop it off." Something about the surprise on Maura's face is satisfying enough that Jane's smiling the whole drive home.

She knows what her next move is going to be, and if it works, her next will be a checkmate.

.,.


	8. play our broken strings

It's not hard to track down Constance Isles. It would have been, for a lawyer, maybe, or a secretary, but Jane is a _detective_ first and foremost (in fact lately she's not sure she has any other identity) and she knows that even confined to desk work she's one of the sharpest. She's good at her job. And if she's lucky, she'll be able to use that to fix what's broken between her and Maura.

Maura's mother is in a special facility outside of Everett, recovering. For the first time in a very long time, Jane's nervous. The last time she spoke to Constance _alone_, she hadn't been cordial. She'd been straightforward and at her hypothetical worst. She knows that her protective side isn't an attractive side, and that she's prone to being over obnoxious when she feels as if something or someone she loves is threatened. The problem is, what she's going to ask requires a colossal amount of trust that she's fairly sure doesn't exist between them. And that's _without_ taking into account that Maura may or may not have spoken to Constance about the shooting.

So she's nervous, but she refuses to let it cripple her. She slips out of BPD a half hour early- the desk and paperwork won't miss her- and lets herself enjoy a few minutes of Boston's characteristic gusty wetness before she slips into her car and it starts to rain. It's not the friendly kind of rain, either; not the rain she sat in with Joey Grant, not the rain that witnessed their almost-kiss. This rain is light but cold, the clouds looming, the wind angling it so that it manages, somehow, to get underneath her umbrella.

The receptionist at the facility is around her age, tall and sandy-haired with a permanent scowl. He seems oddly cold until Jane flashes her badge, and then he's predictably 'helpful' and 'cooperative', while still managing to maintain his attitude and creep her out. The way he looks at her is a little weird; she's used to people eyeing cops with suspicion so she brushes it off. Technically she's abusing the power of her badge, but she doesn't particularly care; the BPD has bigger problems and so does she. She fumbles with the badge when she pockets it again, knowing that if she can't word this right, her whole plan- and any possibility of gaining back Maura's trust- will be shot to hell.

Whatever she expected, it's not what she gets. Constance doesn't look much different than she had before the accident, give or take a few still-healing scratches and well-placed bandages. Perhaps thankfully, most of the bad damage had been done at or below hip level, and the way Constance has arranged herself almost elegantly in the middle f her bed with a throne of pillows hides her hips and legs. When Constance looks up over her reading glasses at her, Jane feels as if Maura is seeing right through her from wherever she is, miles away. "Well, hello."

"Hey," Jane's voice is shaky, so she clears her throat and tries again. "How's…how are things going?"  
>"I'm quite well, actually. The doctors say I'm recuperating fantastically."<br>"That's good to hear." It's like a job interview: she has so much to say, but she's too worried that she'll say it at the wrong time. She takes a deep breath and makes another sad attempt: "So I'm assuming Maura told you what happened."

"Naturally."

_Damn_. Constance, like Maura, has a talent for speaking but saying nothing at all. Jane's hands are clasped behind her back and her fingers move frantically, fluttering over her scars but finding no further answers there or anywhere else.

"And…?" 

Constance carefully dog-ears her book and sets it to the side. "And I think your reaction, given the situation and your training, was entirely reasonable."

Jane feels like someone has dropped a lead weight into her stomach. She swallows hard, nods, and looks away. "Reasonable," she nods again.

"Detective," Constance says plainly- and when Jane turns she's shocked to see that the older woman is smiling. "You don't need to look for forgiveness here. There's nothing to forgive."

A rush of relief follows her words and Jane uses it to fuel some kind of confidence, dropping into the chair beside the bed.

"I have to ask a favor of you. I need to find Maura's birth mother."

.,.

Maura is jumpy and yoga isn't helping. It's an underproduction of serotonin that's causing her agitated state. More specifically, it's the memory of Jane's kiss, of the clinic and the crying, the vulnerability, and the shooting that just _won't let her relax._ She had wanted to stop Jane when she left. She's still not sure what held her back, because as far as she can tell, the only way to fix anything- her hurt or Jane's- is to be together. Yes, the shooting still upsets her; losing her father so soon after emotionally discovering him is _jarring_, but she's come to the realization that she can't heal without Jane. She can't do **anything** without Jane.

Her watch beeps- 3:45 pm. She rolls up the yoga mat and heads to shower, expecting that her courage won't fail her again if she runs through it all in her head until she's there in front of Jane again tomorrow morning.

.,.

"She's…" _don't say dead, God, __**please**__ let her be alive_. "She's unreachable."

Constance is lying- she's good at it, but Jane's better. She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and takes a second to read Constance's expression. She's stubborn and she believes she's doing the right thing- not that Jane blames her. She's going to have to play her wild card: the truth.

"Maura hasn't forgiven me for Doyle's death."  
>"She hasn't spoken to me about it."<p>

"I'm in love with her."

.,.

Her name is Hope Gallagher and she's a part of the Witness Protection Program. Constance explains it, but only vaguely; Hope's association with Doyle and his gang put her in enough jeopardy that her pregnancy scared her into hiding. Even so, she chose to put Maura up for adoption. "She never told me why, really, and I was in no position to ask," Constance says. "I haven't spoken to her in years, but if she hasn't moved, I might still have the address."

She gestures for the pen and pad on the bedside table and Jane scrambles to hand them over. "I hope this helps," Constance murmurs as she scribbles, "I know she cares for you, very much. And if I had to guess, I might even say that she misses you."

.,.

It takes three days for her to get acknowledged by WPP. She lies and says she needs the information for a case; that she has no intention of approaching or exposing Hope Gallagher (who exists under the alias of Diana Jacobson). She only needed to know if Hope had moved. If she gets found out she'll be jailed for at least ten years and probably never get a job again, but as far as threats go, that one feels too far away to even possibly change her mind.

.,.

Maura chickens out. She's not partial to idioms, but that one feels just about accurate. Whenever she sees Jane she freezes up, her knees give whenever their hands meet over evidence or paperwork, and her heart rate rises when they get within a few feet of one another. To avoid it, she avoids Jane- at all costs. If she comes in contact she avoids _eye_ contact to save herself.

She can't figure out why she's so disappointed that Jane doesn't confront her about it.

.,.

It takes another two and a half _weeks_ for jane to find Hope and plan out what she needs to do. On the stupid shows like CSI and NCIS that make homicide look like some kind of a lottery, it takes the protagonist maybe two days to get the information they need. Real life moves much slower. What's worse, Maura's reverted into being just as cold and distant as she'd been immediately following the shooting, and Jane feels like an outsider in her own workplace.

She's recovering, slowly, no longer achy but careful with herself until the three-week mark has passed, just because she knows Maura would want her to be. The problem is, once she's back out in the field, it's impossible to ignore the way Maura ignores her. On her second day back, they're called in for a murder in the park. It seems almost like a suicide- to get a closer look she crouches beside Maura and leans over the corpse. Maura doesn't react. Her eyes move over the man's exposed neck, bruised and lacerated with clean, sure strokes. Jane watches Maura's gloved fingers slip under the collar of the vic's shirt, revealing a thin wire that Jane hadn't noticed earlier.

"Chicken wire?" It's hard to even pretend she's invested in the job when she's waiting for Maura to make eye contact with her, and waiting in vain. Maura flicks the wire aside with her thumb and frowns, as immersed in the case as Jane is detatched. "It severed several arteries in his neck. He bled out."

Jane sighs, nodding in halfhearted agreement. Just as she moves to get up, Maura adds softly, "I'm glad you're back." Whatever the fuck it is that's holding Maura back; whether or not it has to do with something Jane's said, she _knows_ with a cop's conviction that Maura's feelings didn't change.

.,.

Hope lives in a modest little white-washed house off of William J Day and Colombia. It's almost unsettling, at first, that Maura's birth mother could be so close by- that, through every place Maura's lived, she somehow managed to return to Boston and the parents she'd never known.

The moment Jane pulls up at the house she knows something's not right. The street's empty, and the house next door looks relatively lived-in, with the trash can out to the curb and what looks like a kid's toy truck disassembled on the front porch. It takes her a moment to realize what's so off about Hope's house: the mailbox is overflowing and newspapers litter the little porch and brick steps. There's a cat door, but it's been crudely duct-taped shut. A hungry-looking tabby cat greets her when she gets out of the car and she ducks down to scratch under it's chin before she heads to the door, her suspicion growing with each second.

There's something that every cop, out of every precinct in the nation- maybe the world- is taught to understand. It's called a cop hunch. It's one of the only things Jane has any respect for- her own premonition- and if nothing else her experiences with Hoyt have taught her to be. Fucking. _Careful_. What she gets herself into.

She's off-duty, plainclothes, because she figures she's more likely to get a favorable response if she doesn't show up looking like she's ready to take out a suspect. When she knocks, though, she feels exposed- and when the door opens and she's greeted with the barrel of a pistol she instinctively reaches for the gun that's _not there_. She rears back without actually aiming and punches the guy holding the pistol somewhere in the jaw/neck area and while he recovers she realizes exactly who he is.

It's the receptionist from the recovery clinic, the one who had given her such weird vibes. She doesn't have time to think about it move because he starts to straighten up and she sees that she managed to get him right in the jaw and that he's bleeding from somewhere. She kicks the gun out of his hand before he grabs her by the arms, and even as she struggles he manages to get her in the house and kick the door shut before she can get him off of her.

There are advantages to being a burly Caucasian male. Muscle mass is one of them.

But Jane is faster.

He lunges for her again but she ducks out of his reach and knees him in the stomach, taking the time that gives her to bring her hands down, hard, on his back. He falls to the ground still reaching for her legs and ankles, trying to topple her, but weeks of kickboxing have done their job and Jane switches sides, bringing the heel of one boot down on his right hand. He howls.

"Tell me _everything_ you know and how you know it," she snarls. Her attacker moves his free hand and she grinds her heel into his fingers until he yelps again and lies still. "Where is she?"

"I didn't do anything to her."  
>"I didn't ask you," she leans down and fists his shirt into one hand, "if you did anything to her. I asked you where she was."<br>"She's here."  
>"Alive."<br>"I fucking told you I didn't do anything to he-" She slams his head back into the floor, her foot still holding down his hand. "What do you know?"  
>"I'm her son."<p>

Jane lets him up and he scrambles to his feet, just in time for her to shove him back against the wall- just to be sure he's not planning on trying anything. "Bullshit."

"You wanna see my fucking birth certificate?"  
>"Watch it, asshole. Full name."<br>"Do you have a warrant?"

She brings her knee up into his groin because he's a masochist and she's far too willing to take out her frustration on him. "I don't _need_ one. You attacked a cop. Full name."  
>"Gallagher," he coughs, "Nathan Gallagher."<p>

"You wanna tell me why you opened the door and greeted me by shoving a pistol in my face?"  
>"Because you came to take her away."<br>"Away where?"  
>"Away. You came to take her away because he's dead."<p>

.,.

It takes her another half an hour to convince him she's not there to take Hope in for questioning. When she finally gets to _Hope_, it takes her another hour to convince _her_ that Maura needs her in her life. It shouldn't be so hard to do, but Hope is skeptical of her the exact **instant** she figures out she's a cop.

"Just, please. Talk to her. You can disappear as soon as you do, and I swear I won't come looking for you again, but give her a chance."

Hope, who looks disturbingly dissimilar from Maura- tall, thin, mousy, redheaded- fixes Jane with a stony look. "I did give her a chance. By giving her up for adoption, I gave her the _best_ chance I possibly could. And look where she is now! Chief medical examiner. I never could have paid for a fraction of the education she got."

"I'm not asking you to raise her again," Jane replies almost instantly. "I'm just asking you to meet her." It's the sixteenth or seventeeth time she's said exactly that, and this time she's finally worn down Hope's stubbornness. "Fine. I can't see why she'd want to know me, but fine, give me a time and a place."

.,.

Maura's unaware of anything except the paperwork in front of her. That's the way things have to be, nowadays, if she's going to keep herself 'in the game', as it were. Because she's so immersed in that paperwork, and because she's recently downed an espresso, she startles slightly when someone knocks at the door of her office.

It's Jane. She colors and clears her throat, expecting that this has to be the confrontation she's been dreading for weeks. That's until she takes in Jane's expression, the contracting of the muscles around her eyes that indicates…amusement? "Hate to interrupt your analysis of virtuous fluids, but someone's here to see you."

"Vitreous," Maura hears herself murmur instinctually. "Virtuosity is a human trait." But Jane steps back and someone else takes her place, someone a few inches shorter and a few decades older. Someone with reddened anterior palpebral borders and an under-pronounced _incisivus inferior_ much like her own. She sees, as if from miles away, Jane's smile and the way she disappears around the corner. And in that instant she sees every ounce of love she could ever have hoped to see from someone else. She had never been alone, after all.


	9. you can't betray love

**A/N**: Oh my god. You guys. You _guys_. You have all been so wonderful and supportive throughout this entire process. I finished a musical between the time you last saw me update and now, which is why I've been gone so long. Performing kind of saps my writing ability. Also, I'm not gonna lie and say that I'm not disappointed with this last chapter, at least a little bit. Although that might be because it's midnight on a Sunday. But yes. Enjoy, bbs. And thank you so much for all your lovely reviews!

.,.

Hope is nothing like Maura imagined her biological mother might have been. In all honesty she's a little bit…well, disappointing. It's a product of her years spent as a young girl imagining this woman she assumed she would never know- and a product of knowing someone like Angela, who embodies everything she has ever expected a _mom_ to be. She has a mother, a mother who loves her, who jumped in front of a moving car for her, and if she had ever expected the woman who gave birth to her to be a mom, she expected a little too much.

And things are awkward. They exchange small talk, as if they're nothing more than acquaintances. They talk about Jane a little bit, but haltingly, because Hope doesn't have much nice to say (the way she says 'determined' sounds suspiciously like 'pigheaded', which is true, but Maura doesn't want to hear it) and Maura knows she needs to control herself. Much to Maura's surprise, it's Hope that broaches the impossible subject: Doyle.

"I met him when I was very young, you know," is what she says first. Maura is tempted to ask for the antecedent to 'him', but common sense tells her it has to be Doyle, and Jane has told her enough times that constantly correcting peoples' grammar isn't exactly endearing.

"He was handsome then, and dangerous. I was too young to realize how stupid I was being. I… he was good to me."  
>"I don't doubt it," Maura replies, as soothingly as she can manage. She doesn't, either- the glimpses she got of Doyle outside of hostage situations and shootings had shown her what unsettled her the most- that he was just a man. In the end, he was nothing special at all, nothing spectacularly evil, or misunderstood.<p>

"You have his eyes," Hope says, eventually. Maura manages a weak smile. "You have a half brother, you know. Nathan. I'm sure he'd…like to meet you." Maura is suddenly tempted to bring up Colin, but decides against it. The chances are good that Hope hadn't known he had existed, and she's not willing to explain it all. She wants to find Jane and thank her, apologize…she wants to be with Jane. And it's strange how being here in a room with someone she ought to feel connected to is only bringing out in her that same need she's been ignoring for weeks. Jane. She needs Jane.

She can see that Hope is making an effort to be accommodating- smiling too widely, for starters, and it's very clear to Maura that the clothes she's wearing are new, or perhaps not hers at all, because they fit awkwardly- but she doesn't have the patience for it anymore. As much as she knows she needs to reconnect, now isn't the time or the place. "I'd like that," she says, mostly as an afterthought. "I…you caught me at kind of an awkward time, I'm in between cases, and…" _and I'm lying again_, she adds guiltily. It's astonishing how quickly she's gotten the hang of it, actually, but this is the last time she'll do it. She needs Jane.

.,.

The second time Maura comes to her door, Jane's ready for her. She expects Maura to find her, expects a confrontation, but she's not sure whether she should expect Maura to be pleased , or…well, angry. As it turns out, she could never have predicted Maura's actual reaction. She wouldn't have it any other way.

So when the bell rings, Jane knows who it is without checking. It occurs to her too late that she ought to have checked anyway, given her history of being attacked and abducted, but before she can really think about it all the air is gone from her lungs and Maura is kissing her. It's like drowning. And, like a drowning woman, she clutches- finds the fabric of Maura's skirt bunching under her fingers as she kisses back, desperate for air, but more desperate for Maura. It's sloppy but it's the first time Maura has kissed her out of anything other than frustration, and she can feel the difference, even if she can't describe it. It's perfect.

"Thank you," Maura murmurs, then kisses her again.

Jane hears those two words something like six more times before she can grasp the absurdity of kissing Maura right in the doorway of her apartment and uses what leverage she has to pull them both inside. "I'd do it again," she mumbles into another kiss, and she's referring to everything, from shooting a man through her own stomach to beating the shit out of Maura's half brother. She'd do any of it again, and in a heartbeat.

Heartbeats are the only thing besides clothing keeping the two of them from losing track of where one ends and the other begins. They don't match up- Jane can feel Maura's hear beating staccato through the thin silk of her shirt, and she knows Maura can feel hers, too, because her thumb is pressed into her wrist as she pulls the both of them back to where she knows Jane's bedroom is. She stops them, breathless, only feet from the bed. When Maura pulls away her eyes are glassy and her lips are swollen and raw. Jane decides that this is the way she likes Maura best- disheveled and all because of her.

.,.

Jane breathes her name and the words rise to Maura's lips without warning. "I need you." She means 'I love you', but the effect is about the same. It's like a catalyst. Jane immediately goes for the buttons on her blouse, and in her haste she pops one, just as Maura reaches down and practically whips her belt out of its loops. The detective lets out a frustrated little growl and pauses, as if waiting for permission to ruin her shirt completely, and Maura gives it with half a smile: "You owe me a new shirt."

Jane wastes no time in getting that shirt as far away as possible. Buttons fly every which way and Maura would have been laughing if her mouth hadn't been better occupied below Jane's left ear. Jane also manages to do this without leaving Maura's arms for even a second, which is good, because she's not sure she's ready to let go.

Maura gets Jane's pants unzipped eventually (it has nothing to do with the fact that her hands are shaking) and pushes them off the brunette's slim hipsThe scar tissue on her right side surprises Maura for a moment, but when she's reminded of that injury, of that _day_, her heart skips a beat.

Jane distracts her when she kicks her pants and shoes away; Maura becomes aware of the loss of contact just in time for Jane to toss her socks away and then they're attached once More. Maura takes advantage of the element of surprise and drags Jane down with her when she flops backwards onto the bed.

.,.

Jane braces herself with one arm, hovering. In their current position, Maura's neck is more than accessible, and she'd be lying if she said she could resist swooping in for the kill. She can't. And when Maura arches up underneath her, she finds that what she really wants is to _hear_ her. She can remember vaguely that Maura had been quiet the last time they did this, and that's not going to cut it this time, not by a long shot. So she sucks hard at Maura's pulse point, then scrapes her teeth along the hollow between her neck and shoulder, and can't help but grin when Maura reacts with a beautiful, breathless moan. She doesn't even notices she's still wearing her button-down until Maura starts tugging at it.

Jane's not surprised by how quickly Maura manages to get her shirt off, and _without_ popping any buttons. What she's surprised by is how easily Maura wriggles out of her skirt, once Jane manages to get it unzippered. Maura's bra is a front clasp (of course, because efficiency is and always has been of the _utmost_ importance) and Jane flings it away before Maura can even reach around to find the clasp of hers. There's a lot of fumbling, then, and in another time and place it would probably be pretty funny, but as it is there's mostly just so much to _touch_. Jane is suddenly very glad that Maura seems to be so much more coordinated than her, because she's not sure she would have been able to get those panties off _quite_ that quickly- but from here on out it's her game.

Fingers curl- Maura's into the bedspread, and Jane's into Maura. Truth be told, she's fascinated by this, by the way Maura responds to her touch. Against the wall she hadn't been able to see much of anything, and she can remember how badly she had wanted this view: Maura splayed out below her, flushed and breathing shallowly. All for her.

"Jane," Maura breathes, but hardly moves, as if she's afraid that might make Jane lose contact with her. It almost looks like she's about to say something- to thank her again, maybe, or to apologize, or something equally unnecessary. Jane quiets her, tilting her hand just _so_, unsure of why she'd be any good at this but knowing that Maura's slow climb is becoming much faster with each second. "I know," she murmurs into the softness of Maura's neck, "I know."

Somewhere in the haze of the minutes that follow Jane feels Maura's knees come up, brushing her hips. Maura had been quiet the first time they'd done this, but Jane realizes now that she had been quiet out of spite, or out of anger, because she's _loud_. Jane's Italian, used to loudness, but this is surprising even for her. Surprising and hot as hell. Maura is moaning and whining and panting and when Jane rubs against at just the right place it sets her off into a whimpering moan that trails off into a sound the likes of which Jane has never heard in her life- certainly not from Maura. "Jesus," Jane pants, finally able to brace herself with both hands and roll onto her back.

"Indeed," Maura agrees breathlessly beside her. Jane almost makes a jab at her for that, but before she can Maura has moved to roll on top of her. "Talk about turnaround time," she mutters, half-playful and half honestly in awe.

"Yoga," Maura smirks, and it's then that Jane realizes how far in over her head she really is.

.,.

Maura, for her part, is surprised how slowly she recovers. She's normally less than fulfilled by sex, which is why she has tried it more times than Jane has; she has always had a theory that she might be a tad asexual but biromantic, until Jane came onto the scene.

And oh, would she come.

Maura grins at her own 'filthy' joke (nothing, she is sure, by Jane's standards), watching as Jane's pupils dilate, the speckled sable of her irises going dark as soon as she realizes the attention is all on her. Maura's whole body is buzzing with serotonin and adrenaline and the realization that Jane more than probably loves her, and is a fantastic _lover_ besides. It's not as though Maura expected otherwise, but she limits herself from guessing most of the time, which leaves her perpetually pleased and surprised. Such is the case with Jane.

Maura knows Jane. She has spent yoga classes subtly stealing glances at Jane. She might have seemed concerned- a mentor, perhaps- but what she was really doing had been much less innocent. Not as if Maura had ever claimed to be innocent, but it would more than likely have shattered Jane's vision of her as such. The fact is, Maura has spent yoga classes running her eyes over the expanse of Jane's lithe body, the body that she now has all to herself. Each curve and lean line that her eyes have traveled over, her lips cover, and Jane shudders and makes low keening noises beneath her.

Twice, Jane has brought Maura to a ridiculously overwhelming climax. Now, it's Maura's turn.

She wishes desperately that there was a way for her to watch what her attention is doing to Jane, but the vocalizations are more than enough. By the time she gets to the waistband of Jane's simple cotton panties, the detective is writhing and tugging at her hair. She looks up just for a moment and catches the way Jane is staring down at her, eyes gone dark with lust. She keeps their gazes locked when she tugs them down, though Jane doesn't make it easy, struggling to kick them away instead of letting Maura do all the work. Not that that's surprising at all.

The second she makes contact Jane arches off the bed almost completely. Maura can't help but wonder, vaguely, how long it's been for her, but any coherent thought is immediately erased from her mind. She learns. She learns quickly, she always has, and this is no exception. She figures out what Jane likes- the right combination of pressure, the right angle, all of it- and it's not long before Jane starts to tremble. Maura smooths her thumbs over Jane's hipbones, and just like that Jane' snaps.

.,.

Jane isn't sure she's ever been so out of breath in her life. She's in good shape, but apparently she's not in good _enough_ shape for…for whatever the hell has just happened. She's still gasping for air by the time she realizes Maura is curled beside her, watching- and when she looks over she can't help but be surprised by the smug look on the doctor's face. Smug. Honest-to-God smug, like she's just solved a case all by herself.

Jane rolls over and gathers Maura into her arms, and Maura laughs, for the first time in what Jane thinks might have been a long time. "You needed that," Maura tells her breathlessly. Jane bites Maura's shoulder, getting an indignant 'hey!' in response. "Shut up," Jane mumbles, but she's smiling still, in awe of how perfectly they fit together. Maura seems to agree, intertwining their legs and burying her face in the crook of Jane's neck.

It occurs to her to ask how things went with Hope, but she's pretty sure Maura will tell her when she's ready to. Besides, she's pretty sure she knows the answer.

"I'm sorry," Maura says, and it takes Jane a full thirty seconds to realize what she's talking about. "I'm sorry for…everything. I should have been there for you." It's true, sort of, so Jane's not sure how to answer her. She can't count how many times in the last few weeks she wished that she had Maura to talk to. Still, she can't help but feel as if most of it is her fault to begin with. Maura clearly takes her silence for something other than what it is. "I can go."

Maura moves as if to get up but Jane pulls her closer, refusing to let her go.

"Stay."

When Maura speaks again, what feels like hours later, her voice is tremulous, and it's a little ridiculous how happy that actually makes _Jane_. If she had any doubt that Maura really wanted this, wanted _something_, that alone would have convinced her.

"Are you sure?" 

"I'm sure."


End file.
